astouffer wrote:Brought home a MicroVAX II one time complete with a QBUS SCSI card. Got bored and eventually scrapped it. Now I realize how big a mistake that was.

Pick up an HP box at a hamfest and didn't realize it ran MPE/IX. Scrapped it too because the guys on the forum were dicks about me not having a license for getting the system/root/whatever password.

Bought a PDP-11/23 not realizing my limits for operating systems. Donated it to a fellow collector.

We've all been there. Well some of us have anyway. Can't worry about what you have had before just what you find tomorrow and what you do with it then.

The MPE/iX thing is nothing to worry about. Even if you have a box to run it you'll have an impossible time getting the OS and if you do it probably wont run on your machine. I have never met such paranoid people as those in possession of mpe/ix tapes.

I don't know what sort of smack HP laid down but, they still live in fear. I am pretty sure they had an actual hit squad that would take you out if you so much as stuck a mpe/ix tape in an unauthorized tape drive.

The MPE/iX thing is nothing to worry about. Even if you have a box to run it you'll have an impossible time getting the OS and if you do it probably wont run on your machine. I have never met such paranoid people as those in possession of mpe/ix tapes.

I don't know what sort of smack HP laid down but, they still live in fear. I am pretty sure they had an actual hit squad that would take you out if you so much as stuck a mpe/ix tape in an unauthorized tape drive.

I recently scored a nicely equipeed HP C8000 for my collection. One dual-core 1.1GHz PA-8900 CPU (w/64MB L2 cache), 16GB RAM (8x2GB DIMMs), 146GB HDD, FireGL T2 graphics. Not a bad "starter system" for an introduction to the world of HP-UX, which I'd never used until about 2 weeks ago.

Of course, it's not quite as "vintage" as the rest of my collection. Maybe that'll be my excuse to go searching for some older HP gear....

The HP rx2620s have dual “Montecito” hyperthreading/dual-core SL9PCs in them and 24 Gbytes RAM each, also 10GbE and a bunch of other additions. HPVM works nicely, too.

The HP DS15 is a 1000 MHz EV68CB, with 4 Gbytes RAM, has an original (read: costly) HP/Compaq ATI Radeon 7500, with active cooling (thus no noise, no artifacts and great picture quality) and runs SRM V7.3-2 (2008). Various additions, such as dual-ported GbE “DEGX2” (Broadcom BCM5704 via the fairly well-known PCI ID modification trick). The Compaq DS10s have a (as is mentioned above) 466 MHz EV6, with 2 Gbytes RAM each and various 3.3 and 5 V add-ons, whilst running SRM V7.3-1 (2007). To my pleasant surprise, the DS15 ― thanks to the improved bus and bandwidth, with PCI-X, compared to the DS10 ― also runs fine with a 10GbE adapter, which I installed recently; while the DS10s, not surprisingly, couldn't handle it at all.

The DEC, “Digital” or even “[d|i|g|i|t|a|l]”, Personal Workstation 500au systems have the stock 500 MHz EV56 and I increased the RAM to the theoretical 1½ Gbytes in each of them, although I'm not sure how good the memory will eventually prove to work. They run a version of SRM that doesn't sound too old, but definitely feels so (V7.2-1, 2000). I've heard and read that there are issues involved, so I'll see. It's too bad that pre-EV6 systems, like these, don't support Radeon 7500 cards.

Besides the above, I also have a DEC Multia/UDB VX40B, with 166 MHz LCA4, 256 Mbytes RAM and the AXPpci233 “MT Common Console” X4.5-819 (1996). The 340 Mbyte 2½" (old, non-SCA... obviously) SCSI disk died a while back. Before it died, I ran NetBSD/alpha V5.1.1 and also briefly VMS V7.3 with the DEC employees' initiative “midnight hack” kit. I've since been trying to get a so-called PowerMonster II SCSI<=>CF adapter to work, where the manufacturer (“Stratos Technologies”, via the “Art-Mix” company from Japan) told me to be looking into getting it to work for Alpha systems, so I'll await it.

I used to also have a bunch of maxed out HP rx2600s (only a System Board, SL6XF, memory and various ― mostly spare parts ― still left) and a DEC AlphaServer 1000, but I got rid of those over time. Well, that's about it...

@WinilliHeya. This is not really related to the newer gear, but your Multia should be narrow SE in a 40-pin scsi arrangement much like the tadpole sparcbook3's and some early 68k mac laptops (520?). Anyway. I have a couple of narrow SE stratos cards, the Aztec Monster. This:

Really not sure why it says "UltraSCSI-3" ..given the wire's just a standard 50-pin job. Was highly suspicious of this when I first spotted it.

Works Ok in the Amiga with a bit of fiddling for transfers with more modern 4/8gb cards. The second one is in the VS4000-m90A, technically it's in a BA350 on the side as there's no internal disks in the machine. It "just works" with a 2gb CF flash card I had laying about. Very snappy for file reading. Writing feels like a few meg/sec. Planning to see if the pdp-11/70 likes it with the 128mb cards hopefully this weekend if I can.

2x HP C8000, HP-UX 11i v1 (though one is mostly spare parts for the other, which is the one I actually use)HP 9000/350 with 670H hard disk, 9.0 (I think), in the big metal tower enclosure with the hernia megapixel monitor

Toying with getting a small DEC Alpha server to run VMS. Recommendations solicited. Small is the key word.

2x HP C8000, HP-UX 11i v1 (though one is mostly spare parts for the other, which is the one I actually use)HP 9000/350 with 670H hard disk, 9.0 (I think), in the big metal tower enclosure with the hernia megapixel monitor

Toying with getting a small DEC Alpha server to run VMS. Recommendations solicited. Small is the key word.

Oh my.... that was my "dream" card back in '95 for the uVAXII I had (in a BA23). So expensive then.. I guess now impossible to come by? AFAIK it was the only way to extend the disks in the machine beyond low capacity MFM... may be mistaken here but it has been 17 years

But thinking about the card still sends shivers down my spine.... ultra geeky I know.